Big Macs on a Mission in WPIAL tournament

For Canon-McMillan’s Dario Dobbin, it wasn’t so much a decision as it was a necessity.

Previously, Dobbin had made an early exit from the WPIAL Class AAA individual tournament in each of his first two high school seasons—always falling out of the championship bracket in the quarterfinal round.

So it came as little surprise that the 135-pound junior had a few extra butterflies working against him on Friday night, as he and seven other Canon-McMillan wrestlers took to the mats for this year’s WPIAL tournament quarterfinal round.
Needless to say, Dobbin wasn’t about to let history repeat itself again.

Refusing to lose, Dobbin scrapped out a 3-0 decision over Plum’s John Marotto to earn his first trip to the WPIAL semifinal round. He is joined in the championship bracket by teammates Colt Shorts (103 pounds), Connor Schram (112), Solomon Chishko (130), Nick Catalano (145) and Cody Klempay (285)—who all won their matches on Friday.

Big Macs Sammy Minor (125) and Alex Campbell (215) will also participate in the tournament today, but will have to battle their way out of the consolation bracket in order to place and earn a trip to the rapidly approaching PIAA state tournament.

“It was a good round today for everybody,” Canon-McMillan coach Chris Mary said. “We’re looking forward to tomorrow’s semifinals. The kids are opening up and wrestling well.”

That statement certainly applies to Dobbin, who had to fight down an unusually strong case of unease before and during his match with Marotto.

“The last two years I kind of fell short in the quarterfinals,” Dobbin said. “So I was a lot more nervous this year.”

Those extra jitters put Dobbin (37-10) on a conservative path to open the match against Marotto (29-5), and it wasn’t until the early second round that either wrestler scored a point. But when the pair finally made use of the scoreboard, it was

Dobbin who put up the points—gaining his feet after starting the period in the down position for an unstable 1-0 lead that he would carry into the final round of the
match.

“I didn’t open up as much as I should have,” Dobbin said. “Going into the third [period] I was thinking that I couldn’t lose this match. I just couldn’t.”

He didn’t.

Using a tilt that he had been working on since the summer, Dobbin managed to put Marotto in a bad spot late in the third, eventually rolling to pinning position for a brief moment to pick up a two-point near fall. Up 3-0, Dobbin began to finally settle down, and hung on the rest of the way to punch his ticket to the semifinals, where he will take on top-seeded Ty Lydic (35-7) of Latrobe.

Surprisingly, Dobbin is considerably more at peace with his latest matchup.

“It’s tough, because I have the No. 1 seed next. I’ve known him since we were eight or nine, and he’s beaten me ever since,” Dobbin said of Lydic. “But I’m not so worried, because I’m the underdog.”

Much as Dobbin willed his way to victory on Friday night, so too did Canon-McMillan’s Catalano—just in a vastly different way.

Wrestling with palpable determination since his lone loss of the season at the POWERade Christmas Tournament, Catalano has been a man on a mission in his own right. And so far, nobody has slowed him down in his fourth consecutive WPIAL tournament either. Certainly North Allegheny’s Kevin Monper
couldn’t on Friday night.

Catalano (42-1) took Monper (28-9) down with relative ease throughout the first two rounds—allowing Monper to regain neutral position after each one, and building an 8-4 lead in the process. Catalano then continued to pour on the intensity in the third period, starting from neutral and taking Monper down and into a pin with 58 seconds left in the match.

“I treat every match the same way. I go out there and wrestle hard, that’s it,” Catalano said, before conceding that taking home a title today would carry a little extra significance. “It would mean a lot. I work hard every day, so I think it’s just something I should have.”

Catalano and company will have the opportunity to do just that when the WPIAL tournament resumes today at Canon-McMillan High School at 10:30 a.m. with consolation rounds, and then wraps up tonight with the consolation finals at 5:30 p.m. and the championship finals at 7 p.m. The top three wrestlers in each weight class will advance to the state tournament.

“Every wrestler wants to win a WPIAL and state title,” Catalano said. “Especially a state title.”